Hotel offering school supplies

FAIRBORN – The Holiday Inn Dayton-Fairborn will demonstrate its support of the local military community by hosting Operation Homefront’s Back-To-School Brigade, in which more than 400 backpacks chock-full of brand new school supplies will be distributed to area servicemen and their families.

Eligible recipients include: active duty, E1-E6, or all ranks of post 9/11 wounded, ill or injured. It is slated for 12-4 p.m. Sunday, July 30.

Operation Homefront’s Back-To-School Brigade provides military children with backpacks filled with supplies, helping relieve families of this cost and enabling them to use their income for other household expenses. Backpacks for military children contain an impressive inventory of supplies, including pens and pencils, crayons, paper, scissors, binders and more.

The National Education Association estimated in 2016 that families would spend $200 on average, per elementary student or $330 and $375 per middle and high school student, respectively, on spiral notebooks, scissors, glue sticks, etc. As more and more schools ask parents to chip in for classroom materials, parents planned to spend 12 percent more on school supplies from the year before, more than $100 per family. When combined with other childcare costs, military families face difficult choices about whether to ensure their children are well supplied for school or to put food on the table.

The Back-to-School Brigade program is made possible through the generosity of Dollar Tree, SAIC, and other donors and partners. More information can be found at www.OperationHomefront.org.